Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The magic of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry lands on the PS one in good form.

There is no doubt that Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone for those in the UK) is headed to be one of the biggest films of 2001, and possibly of all time as some early predictions suggest. Judging by the number of people around the world who read the four novels, this is not a surprise.

When the Harry Potter videogames were announced, most Potter fans grew worried. If the books were tricky to accurately translate to film, how would they be turned into a game? After all, the stories are based in a school and the adventures around it. How can you turn classes in a school into a fun game? What about the wizard sport of Quidditch, how could you translate that into something that is actually playable?

Thanks to Argonaut and EA Europe, some of those fears have been put to rest in the PlayStation version of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. Loosely based on both the original novel and the movie of the same name, the game chronicles Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and even enables you to play a bit of Quidditch against the other houses. Argonaut has a bit of platforming experience under their belt with the Croc series, but Harry Potter is a departure from those games, and does manage to stay true to the spirit of the books.

Gameplay At its core, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone is more of an adventure game along the lines of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time than a platformer such as Croc. This means that the controls are geared more toward the console action/adventure genre than a reflex-based platformer.

Harry can run along and automatically climb up objects, but there is no jump button. If you need to make a jump from one ledge to another, little Harry will do it by himself, just as Link would in the N64 Zelda games.

One of the great things about this is just how responsive the control is. You are able to steer yourself in mid-air, which becomes extremely helpful later in the game. At about the halfway point in the adventure you need to race the house poltergeist Peeves along rafters in the attic. These are very small boards with many slippery spots, and if the control wasn't this responsive, you'd be falling off the rafters quite a lot, which would make the fun and tense sequence much more frustrating than it needs to be.

By the time you reach that part the controls will be second nature. The game eases you into the gameplay by providing training that's integrated into the story. For instance, early in the adventure you learn how to jump and climb by running across some bookcases to look for Harry's owl Hedwig.

What would Harry Potter be without magic? Thankfully, that part of the mythos is perfectly woven into the game, and as with the controls, you're eased right into it via short practice sequences for each spell, which take place in the various magic classes.

Players start off gradually in the spell-casting department. The first spell is a simple one in which all you have to do is point and shoot. Then you move up to more complex spells where you have to time button presses along a circle in order to cast it. If you don't match the buttons quickly enough, the spell fails and you'll have to restart.

Each spell is used at a specific time via context sensitive sparkles that appear over targets. The color of the sparkle above the target when you start to cast a spell predicates what spell is chosen. One spells torches an object in flame while another casts light in the darkness and make platforms appear for you to cross. Players can aim spells either by looking at the object, using a limited first-person view to target the victim, or by using a lock on feature (again like Zelda) for moving targets.

The story is carried out through a series of quests. Players usually have to find an object by traveling through an area while solving puzzles and using the spells. As they should, these areas start off easy and gradually grow tougher as the game progresses. Later in the game, every skill from using spells in combat to jumping from ledge to ledge will be used quite a bit, so it's good to learn everything early in the adventure.

Of course, one of the best parts in the game is the Quidditch matches. Players learn how to fly brooms and then eventually how to play the game itself. Quidditch is played like a mini game, but once you play the first match in the adventure you're able to play through a series of matches against the other houses whenever you want (it shows up as a "Play Quidditch" option the next time the game is loaded). The game basically has three "rounds." The first one has you flying through rings after the Snitch, round two has you doing the same except you are racing against the rival Seeker, and finally the third round has you trying to catch the Snitch.

The only big problem I have with the gameplay is that sometimes the camera can be twitchy. You are able to move the camera via the shoulder buttons, but once in a while it gets to an awkward angle or doesn't swing around quick enough when you are trying to quickly fire off a spell at an enemy that is chasing you.

Despite that little issue, the game will keep players busy. This isn't an epic RPG, but the pacing is set so that you'll be busy for a few days going through the game, and it rarely gets too repetitive or boring.

Graphics These days, when you pop a new game into a PS one you really aren't expecting to be impressed with the graphics. With so many people focusing on PS2 titles, the little gray system gets neglected in the graphics department. Not so with this game.

Argonaut and EA Europe have crafted one of the best-looking PS one games I've seen in a while. The thing that impressed me the most was the texture quality. While you have the normal PS problems of texture seams and other imperfections, the textures themselves were very sharp and looked almost high-resolution.

Spell effects also fare pretty well with most casting a light on the environment around them when initiated, while others produce impressive particle effects for a 32-bit game. The character models are decent, with average poly counts.

All of this doesn't come without a price, as it can cause the framerate to seriously chug at times. It isn't so annoying when you are just running around the castle, but when you are going for the fastest time possible in a Quidditch game, it can hurt.

Sound The audio department is probably the least impressive aspect of the game, but that doesn't mean it's all bad. Voice acting is surprisingly decent and thankfully, they used British actors (or people imitating British accents well) for all of the characters. Everyone's favorite potions master, Professor Snape, comes across very well. The music in the game fits the theme well and it even sounds a little similar to John William's score for the film.

The Verdict

As a Harry Potter fan I was looking forward to all of the games based on the books/movies, but I was also a little worried. At least in this game it was apparent that the game's creators paid attention to important details and that they made sure that they weren't some rushed out.

I do wish the Quidditch was a little more in-depth, but maybe some day they'll release a standalone Quidditch game. There is just so much you can do with that game from school matches all the way up to professional Quidditch. And with it being one of the most popular parts of the book series, there is definitely a market for it.

Potter fans will probably enjoy this more than others, but judging by the slim pickings of good games on the PS one these days, anyone who enjoys a little adventure probably could have some fun with this one. Hopefully, next year we'll get a PS2 game based on Chamber of Secrets.